Publication details
Rituál smrti a sociální praxe ve věku konfesí: historicko-antropologická perspektiva
| Title in English | Death Ritual and Social Practice in the Age of Confessions: The Perspective of Historical Anthropology |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sociální studia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | History |
| Keywords | Rituals of death;early modern period;anthropological approaches;burial disputes;towns;confessionalisation |
| Description | Historical research on death and dying has been inspired by sociological and anthropological approaches for a long time. However, the theme of the social use of death in the early modern period rarely came up until the 1980s. This perspective emphasizes the problems of death and death rituals as a presentation and reconstruction of social order. The early modern period had many specific characteristics, one of which was the significance of confessions, as a result of the European Reformation. Consequently, burials and death rituals often became part of a sphere, in which confessional identity was expressed. In confessionally-mixed regions – mainly in towns – the (confessionally-defined) communities tried to attack the rituals of other confessions in order to ensure their own purity. Thus, basic anthropological principles can be observed in early modern society: membership in a community played the most important role and one's incorporation in it through traditional rituals and a proper burial were seen as guaranteeing one's perpetual membership in the society of Christians; separation and exclusion, on the contrary, led to the prevention of symbolic contact between the dead and the living, without which there was no salvation. |